By Paul Nicholson
March 27 – English Premier League clubs have agreed to share at least £1 billion of league income in the period 2016/17-2018/19. The money will be shared through the English football pyramid as well as to good causes.
March 26 – Copa90, the digital football network, will showcase a new broadcast distribtuion option for rightsholders and sports-sponsor brands at the Stade de France tonight when the Brazil World Tour kicks off.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 26 – Hassan al-Thawadi’s (pictured) mood was as bright as the spring sun that shone down over Zurich. For months – no, make that years – Qatar’s multi-lingual 2022 World Cup organising chief has had to field all manner of attacks over his country’s right to stage the tournament, whether it should be in summer or winter and what would happen if workers’ rights were not improved.
March 26 – Ahead of the FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada, details of the Hyundai Young Player Award were revealed on Wednesday at the Vancouver International Auto Show.
March 26 – The annual France Football Rich Lists for players and managers have been released, with the lists topped by Lionel Messi and Jose Mourinho respectively.
By Andrew Warshaw
March 26 – Two months after announcing he was standing as a FIFA presidential candidate against Sepp Blatter, Prince Ali bin al-Hussein of Jordan has broken his self-imposed withdrawal from the media spotlight by accusing the current regime of not doing nearly enough to develop football on the ground and Blatter in particular of playing politics to meet his own re-election ends.
By Alexander Krassimirov
March 26 – Players at Bulgaria’s Lokomotiv Plovdiv boycotted training for a second day in protest against wages. The club recently changed ownership from businessman Konstantin Dinev to supporters’ association Future for Lokomotiv.
March 26 – Spain’s 42 professional clubs have put strike plans on hold in order to give authorities more time to draw up proposals for a collective bargaining agreement for TV rights.
By David Owen
March 26 – Premier League clubs generated their first pre-tax profit in 15 years in 2013-14, Deloitte, the business advisory firm, has confirmed, as increased revenues from the current, more lucrative broadcasting deal far outpaced any rise in costs.
By Andrew Warshaw in Vienna
March 25 – The vote is over but the resentment lingers – and we are not talking about the FIFA presidency. David Gill may have been clear favourite to become Britain’s new FIFA vice-president on Tuesday but his trouncing of Welsh FA president Trefor Lloyd-Hughes left a sour taste in some mouths – particularly Welsh mouths.
By Mark Baber
March 25 – The infamous ability of well-to-do Italian criminals to string out court cases until the statute of limitations kicks in was again revealed this week as the top Juventus officials involved in the Calciopoli match-fixing scandal escaped prison.
By David Owen
March 25 – One of Scotland’s best-known brands is becoming a sponsor of England’s Football League. Irn-Bru, the distinctive orange-coloured fizzy drink whose publicity materials once claimed it was “made in Scotland from girders”, will be the official soft drink partner of the body overseeing the second, third and fourth tiers of English football, in a three-year deal beginning during this year’s season-ending play-offs.
By Andrew Warshaw in Vienna
March 25 – UEFA president Michel Platini is steadfastly maintaining his stance that he is not specifically backing any one of the three candidates standing against Sepp Blatter for the FIFA presidency.
By Alexander Krassimirov
March 25 – Julian Indzhov (pictured), who was in the final stages of negotiation to buy Bulgarian football club CSKA Sofia, has this morning withdrawn from the acquisition process.
By Jaroslaw Adamowski
March 24 – Bundesliga chief Christian Seifert has unveiled plans for the German top tier to introduce Monday matchdays. Seifert made his comments during a recent trip to Poland’s capital Warsaw, where he met with the management of the Bundesliga’s Polish counterpart, the Ekstraklasa.